Laxalt Visits Grant Bowler Elementary

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is also the Republican candidate for Governor, paid a visit last week to Grant Bowler Elementary School to learn about what the school is doing in its new Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) focus.

During the Friday afternoon visit, Laxalt dropped in on several classrooms and talked with children and teachers about what they had been studying in the STEM program that day.

The Bowler program is new this year. It has kids focusing on various steps of the “design thinking process” with the goal of teaching them to be better explorers, innovators and problem solvers in their future life’s paths. Each Friday, the students participate in something the school calls ‘Get Smart Groups’ led by teachers that focus on an aspect of design thinking.

“What we are doing is trying to prepare our students with problem-solving skills to handle whatever comes their way in the future,” explained Bowler Principal Shawna Jessen.

The Get Smart Group of fourth grade teacher Mikayla Ozaki had been working on a lockbox activity. Like an escape room scenario contained in a small box, students had to solve puzzles and interpret various clues to “get out” of the box.

In first grade teacher Carol Eide’s classroom, the day’s activity was about paper. The students discovered how paper is manufactured and they learned about its various uses.

Students told Laxalt about other activities they had experienced that day including adventures in robotics, learning to film commercials, doing magic tricks, building parachutes and more.
Laxalt said that he was impressed by what he saw at the school. “It is great to see a program like this where kids are so engaged,” he said. “I think we need to find more ways to get out of the traditional mould and these kinds of STEM or career and tech programs is one solution. Anything that gets kids headed toward real world jobs is great.”

After the classroom visits, Laxalt spent a few moments speaking to local school principals and administrators about his stance on education issues in the state.

Laxalt said that he favors more choice for parents in education including Education Savings Accounts and Opportunity Scholarship Programs.
“Some people say that those programs would take away from public schools but I don’t think that is quite so,” Laxalt said. “After all, if the funding follows the student, as it should, then if you have one less kid in the school, you have less expense involved with educating that kid. So it doesn’t really take anything from the public school.”

“I just think that there is a need for parents to have more options in education, not less,” Laxalt added.
Laxalt emphasized that he was strongly committed to working with the upcoming state legislature to devote more funding towards education in the state.

“We are looking at an increase in revenues in 2019,” Laxalt said. “So we have to set priorities on what to do with that funding. My top priority is on education.”

As the school day came to an end, Laxalt went out to the playground at the school. There he interacted with kids and their parents. He threw a football back and forth with youngsters and ehe ven helped the school’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) members in handing out popsicle treats to the kids as they left for the day.